“You are a powerhouse,” Lux murmured. “But you are far from the only one with considerable power in the courts. You need to protect yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually. In war, it’s all on the table.”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
“Anything stand out?” Astra asked Ameera, her lanky body stretched out on a blanket in the gardens, stacks of books anchoring the corners in the early Autumn breeze.
“Not particularly. I’m beginning to think we’re crazy.”
“Me too.” Astra flipped through Ehlaria’s translation for the third day in a row, waiting for something new to jump out at her. She’d made it halfway through the story without anything appearing relevant to the Rift, or Selenia, or Shadows. So far, it read as a jumbled string of plots between two star-crossed lovers.
They met in a vague realm between realms—a Shadow Witch and a Light Mage. They were too afraid to touch, but couldn’t stop wandering back to one other over the decades.
Perhaps it needed to be read in its original tongue to make more sense. She could convince Lux to read it, probably, not that he had much free time these days.
He’d spent the last few weeks either working on tricks with her or organizing things back home. A few days after they’d returned from Ellume, Mirquios sent along a novel’s worth of notes for Lux to tend to, worried that their prolonged stay left Mercury vulnerable. They’d been engaged in intense debates and negotiations from what Lux reported and what Lunelle wrote. Her sister was overwhelmed, homesick, and unsure she belonged in Pluto, her letters riddled with the things she missed about home.
Astra still received brief notes from Mirquios with each post drop, usually something sweet and meaningless. The way two strangers would write to each other, she’d remind herself. She rolled onto her back, holding up the book to cover the nearly full Moon above, the light washing them in a cool glow.
A litany of questions she’d avoided rolled through her mind unstoppably fast.
Would she ever adjust to the golden light of the Sun? Would her heart ache forever for the cool tones of the Moon—its presence gone from half her life, just like that? Would she ever feel more than a tepid tolerance of the king’s touch?
Was that something she could make do with? Before she could stop herself, she slipped back into Celene, strong hands running across her back under the springs. The heat in her spine as it arched against the commander’s touch… could she really sacrifice that? Or something like it, of course.
Ameera interrupted her. “You’re leaking your bummer mood all over me.”
“Oh,” she laughed, that had become more of an issue as she expanded her abilities. They’d been working on shields, but the concept of keeping her feelings in had always been foreign to her. She’d been an open book her entire life, to everyone’s detriment, but especially to her own. “Sorry. Ameera?”
“Hmm?”
“What do you know about Tethers?”
Ameera closed her book, pushing herself up from the blanket. “Quite a bit,” she said, a rush of orange skepticism between them. “They’re a much larger deal in Venus than they are here.”
“Of course.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Ask what you really want to ask.”
“Are they always instant?”
Ameera’s lips smiled tightly, a release of something in her chest Astra could not trace. “Not always. There are plenty of cases where they take time to develop. I had a cousin who was with her husband for a decade before theirs snapped into place. It was after their first child—something changed within them both and that did it.”
“Fascinating,” Astra breathed. “So there can be a right person, wrong time?”
“Something like that. But my cousin still knew. Deep down. Sometimes even the gods get the timing wrong.”
“But do they get the Tethers wrong?”
Ameera sat with that in tense silence for a moment.
“No. They do not. The gods stitch Tethers together the same way they weave Souls and Shadows into one. Once attached, it’s irrevocable. You’ll find each other in a million lifetimes if you have to.”
A group of maidens crossed the garden, fiery orange blossoms, red roses, and yellow daisies falling from buckets in their hands.
“It can’t already be the Equinox,” Astra said.
“It is, indeed,” Ameera confirmed. “Tula didn’t want to burden you with planning the ball. She’s still worried you got hurt on her watch.”
